Sunday, September 24, 2017

Regretfully, but not surprisingly, most people are outcome-oriented in both their thinking and their voting. This means that, regardless of the process used, if they like the outcome on an issue they are for it, and if they don’t like it they are against it. An important and timely example of that is the present controversy about the issue of the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” or DACA. Virtually everyone agrees that these “Dreamers,” who were brought into this country illegally by their parents before they turned 16 years of age, are blameless, and that it would in so many ways be an unfair tragedy to deport them. Accordingly, upon balance, the outcome that almost everyone favors is to work out a situation in which those who have been studying and working hard, and have stayed on the right side of the law, can remain in this country, and often even have a pathway to citizenship.

So what is the problem? The first thing that must be done is to fix the immigration system itself, and the best way to do that is to provide work visas rather liberally after a background check for such things as mental, criminal justice and terrorist issues. But no welfare will be attached! The failure for this system not being fixed is laid directly at the doorstep of Congress because, although they talk about it, many of them don’t actually want to! Why? Basically because numbers of influential Republicans continue to want the cheap labor, and influential Democrats continue to want people coming into our country who are anticipated eventually to vote for Democrats. In the meantime, millions of people have been harmed. But the responsibility also is laid at the doorstep of President Obama who, according to his own statements, had no authority unilaterally to change the laws and create the DACA program. He himself said, as late as July of 2011, that he would like to change the system on his own, “but that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our Constitution is written.” So the current proposal to send the issue back to Congress with a six-month window to devise a workable system is one based upon the Constitution. Allowing unilateral actions to pass laws is a direct threat to Liberty. Maybe many people might like the results of those actions this time, but what about next time? Re-instituting segregation, as done by President Woodrow Wilson? Re-instituting internment camps for Japanese-Americans as done by President Franklin Roosevelt? Those were unilateral acts of which no one today is proud. So, along with obtaining desired results, we must also protect the process – our separation of powers – to protect the Liberty of us all!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion. And by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com. Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The logical extreme has happened in New York City! According to an August 19, 2017 article on the front page of the New York Times, teachers who either had disciplinary problems or bad teaching records or who worked in schools that had either been closed or were experiencing a decline in enrollment were paid $150 million in salary last year alone – not to teach! That constituted a full 822 teachers, more than 200 of whom had been receiving those payments for at least five years! At an average salary of $94,000 per year! They could have been re-engaged as teachers, but their performance was so poor that none of the school principals wanted them. So, since the teacher’s unions were so strong that they couldn’t be fired, they were being paid their full salaries mostly not to teach.

How can a society that holds itself up as the Land of the Free tolerate such a result? And how many other school districts around the nation are in the same situation? In today’s world, imagine how much of a benefit it would have been to the students to have had that money for smaller classrooms, extra labs, field trips or tutors? In too many places around our country our schools are failing our children. So, as had been stated several times in this column, we must decide what the purpose is for our educational system: to educate our children? Or to protect below-average teachers? Liberty means that our children’s interests must be placed ahead of supporting teachers who cannot teach! Thomas Jefferson famously said that we should have a bloody revolution every generation to keep the vested special interests at bay. Fortunately, our Constitution has given us a means for the revolutions not to be bloody. But how long has it been? When witnessing outcomes like this, maybe it is time for another of these revolutions! How about trying it out with the Libertarians, who would never allow this result to occur!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion. And by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com. Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

Friday, September 8, 2017

The truth is the truth, regardless of when it is spoken. And who better to speak about timeless racial truths than Frederick Douglass? A former slave and premier abolitionist writer, Douglass spoke and wrote often and forcefully that “It has long been the desire of our enemies to deepen and widen the line of separation between the white and colored people of this country.” In literal effect, the only minority that counted for Douglass was the “Minority of One,” which was the individual. And with what we have seen in the last few months and years in our country, we truly need to keep his teachings fresh in our minds because so many people from so many different standpoints are trying to separate us.

Douglass emphasized that America was a nation founded upon “human brotherhood and the self-evident truths of Liberty and Equality.” In that regard, he went on to say that the designation or protection of specific groups or classes of Americans would lead to a focus upon benefits and burdens of class members at the direct expense of the protection of individual rights. But, as he timelessly reminded us, “The Constitution knows no distinction between citizens on account of color.” Instead, the “burden of our demand upon the American people shall simply be justice and fair play.” Thus “We utterly repudiate all invidious distinctions, whether in our favor or against us, and only ask for a fair field, and no favor.” In other words, Frederick Douglass was a champion of Liberty, and asked for no more nor no less – for everyone! Each one of us today should simply and stalwartly demand and enforce the same! That is fundamentally what America is – and should be – about!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion. And by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com. Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Last week we talked about how Government is Money. In other words, people in government have their own biases and, often, personal desires for power and influence. So Liberty —in this context defined as instituting a system for private individuals to have incentives to prosper by producing (legal) goods and services that other people will desire and purchase – will almost always triumph over government bureaucracy, controls and regulations. And that is what has happened over the past few years with the survival of bees.

According to an article by Shawn Regan in the August/September edition of Reason, large numbers of honeybees started disappearing in 2006. And not only were they dying, they were mysteriously abandoning their hives. The situation became so widespread that in 2013 some experts predicted “a world without bees.” In response, the Obama administration set aside $82 million in funding and formed a task force to deal with this “crisis” by creating a “national pollination strategy.” But this crisis was averted because of Liberty, which rendered the federal monies and efforts unnecessary and even wasted.

What happened? Commercial beekeepers, who make a profit both by “renting” their bee colonies to orchards during the blooming season, and also selling the honey that is produced, had incentives to deal with the losses of bees. So they responded in two ways. First they privately determined that two parasitic types of mites were killing the bees. So they countered by the use of miticides, fungicides and other treatments. Second, they artificially stimulated the production of thousands more queen bees which, in turn, generated hundreds of thousands more honeybees. The advocates of Big Government felt good about themselves in spending the taxpayers’ money and “rallying to the cause,” but no government involvement was really needed. What is needed instead in to nurture a climate that supports Liberty!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion. And by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com. Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

(Okay, I know this was three paragraphs. I could have combined the last two together, but I didn’t want to make my 9th grade grammar teacher, Ms. Menazian, mad at me!)

Judge Jim Gray

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About Judge Jim Gray

Cited on numerous occasions for his work in the areas of both social reform and civic philanthropy, Judge James P. Gray currently presides over the civil trial calendar for the Superior Court of Orange County.
Judge Gray was appointed to the Santa Ana Municipal Court in 1983 by Governor George Deukmejian, and in 1989, Deukmejian elevated Gray to his post with the Superior Court.
Throughout his 29-year career within the legal and judicial community, Jim Gray has not only donated hundreds of hours of volunteer time to existing community service-oriented activities, he also has created and implemented a number of innovative programs of his own, each one a success story in itself.